Blood & Beauty The Borgias

Chapter 17



He could have fled. There was time enough as the army approached, and from Naples King Alfonso had offered him sanctuary in the great southern fortress of Gaeta. But it has never been in Alexander’s nature to walk away from a fight and anyway, to leave the papal throne empty would have been an invitation to della Rovere to try his bony rump on it for size. No. However desperate the situation might seem, Rodrigo Borgia is not going anywhere. If anything as the tension mounts he becomes more relaxed.

The morning when the French messenger delivers the King’s demand to enter the city, the Pope is having his bath. The ritual, which takes place every second week, is a semi-sacred time and he will not rush it for anyone.

He sits in the great wooden tub, protected from draughts by curtains on three sides and a tray over the top with a plate of cheeses and sugared figs, and a goblet of hot wine. The temperature of the water is refreshed by a relay of servants balancing heated pails. It is freezing outside and the sense of weightlessness and warmth offer him exquisite pleasure. Rome was once a city of baths. Their ruins speak of a way of living that is lost to them now, when the bath house was a great council chamber and the men who ruled the empire sat amid steam and plunge pools, working out strategy and politics. In his youth, when he had a body that drew as much admiration as his mind, he would have loved it. But he is grown so stout now that he is loath to show himself to those who do not already love him. Well, when this is over, he promises himself, he will fast for a while. He takes another sugared fig and leans back.

When he finally emerges, scrubbed clean like a huge pink baby and scented with sweet oils, he is gratified to note how filthy and bedraggled the waiting French courtiers appear, and how from under their hurried anointing of perfume there rises the inexorable stink of camp life.

‘Oooph! Excuse me,’ he says waving his hand as if to give himself some air. ‘The heat of the water is still with me. But I see it is still thick frost outside. Army life is such a challenge at this time of year, no? Why don’t you move closer to the fire? You look half frozen,’ he says brightly, noting how the glow of the blaze shows off the chapped skin on their cheeks. They have barely stopped shivering when he starts again. ‘Alas, I only wish we could thaw you out longer. But business is business. So, please tell your majesty that I will think hard about his “offer” and get back to him as soon as God has guided me in considering it. Oh – and I have instructed my servants to give you clean towels to take with you. To assist you with the… the grime of the road.’ He brings a finger lightly to his nose. When one is under pressure, one must take pleasure where one can.

The next day he and Cesare watch as the enemy amasses outside the walls. Whatever the bravura of his reply, they both know it is only a matter of time. From the upper storeys of Sant’ Angelo they look down on the French cavalry grazing their horses in the fields, the artillery rolling to a rest, the great bronze pipes thick as battering rams but nimble enough on their carts. It is the first time such transportable cannons have been used on Italian soil and Cesare, an eager student of war, cannot take his eyes off them. They have already blown holes in any city walls that opposed them and Rome will be no exception.

Fortunately for history, the supplies inside the city are so low as to ensure surrender without the use of force. On Christmas morning, the Pope calls the cardinals and commanders and announces his decision to admit the King. The remaining ragged allied forces leave by the southern gate, and that night three French envoys are admitted to the Vatican chapel to meet with the Pope. They make themselves at home in seats expressly reserved for the highest-ranking churchmen. Burchard, beside himself at the insult, is furiously chastising them when Alexander himself enters.

‘You will have us skewered and roasted in our beds if you don’t find a way to accommodate them,’ the Pope hisses under his breath as he sees him to the door.

‘It is not right. God will never forgive us,’ the German stammers, his pain evident.

‘Neither will I. And it is me you will have to answer to first,’ he says, before smiling broadly as he turns to greet the Frenchmen. His charm and the authority of his bulk in ceremonial papal silk have them out of the seats and on their knees fast enough. He wafts his ringed hand for them to kiss. The robes still make the man, as he knows very well.

Six days later the army marches in. The spectacle trumps anything the Borgias themselves might mount, and the whole of Rome comes out to watch. Those who do the counting at the gates will argue for years about numbers. Gossip and terror inflate the size of any army when it is rolling in conquest, and alongside the soldiers come the inevitable camp followers, with, the further they march, more women and stragglers attaching themselves like iron filings to a great moving magnet. Certainly modern Italy has seen nothing like it before. At the most conservative estimate over twenty-five thousand warriors troop into Rome that day; swordsmen, pikemen, crossbow men, cavalry, artillery, each group paid to deliver a different kind of death. It takes them so long to reach the Palazzo San Marco, where the King and his principal warriors are to be billeted, that night falls on the way and the last troops march through freezing temperatures to the light of great smoking torches. And in places of honour, next to the King, ride Giuliano della Rovere and the newly freed Ascanio Sforza.

The Palazzo San Marco with its echoes of Venetian splendour is more than worthy of royalty. Its inner courtyard is as big as an exercise field and the stone staircase swirling up three or more floors makes a man’s eyes giddy trying to take in all the levels. There are stories of how the newly installed young king has his servants carry him up and down lying on a litter, so that he can follow the twists and hollows of its stone flow without risking cricking his neck, for he is, unfortunately, both a hunched and a runty fellow. His behaviour is triumphant and nervy in equal measures. He eats every meal with four doctors in attendance in case of the slightest trace of poison, and his wine is served in a cup with a piece of unicorn horn embedded in the bottom to prove the purity of the grape. He is at his most imperious after he has digested successfully.

Three days in, Charles’s demands reach the Pope, via a meeting with Burchard, who has been called to attend him. The Roman sky is sack-heavy with rain when the German enters the Room of the Saints, where Alexander sits in conference with Cesare. Whatever news is private to the papacy is public to his son.

‘Oh, Holy Father, they have the manners of animals.’ The Master of Ceremonies is incandescent with outrage. ‘They treat prelates like errand boys and the palazzo is a pigsty. They have lit a fire in front of the great tapestries, so they are black with soot, and though they were given a great number of clean pallets of straw they have soiled them all already. The filth is such that it is impossible to tell which rooms are for the horses and which for the men. And still they want more. They have a list of houses they intend to commandeer. And—’ He takes a dramatic breath…

‘And your own is one of them?’

Burchard closes his eyes as a shudder of horror goes through him.

‘It is most appalling, certainly. But perhaps you might tell us their other demands?’

‘Ah! Ah! Here.’ He thrusts the paper at them. ‘That you surrender Castel Sant’ Angelo. That you hand over Prince Djem as hostage for His Majesty’s journey to the Holy Land. And—’

‘What about the Sultan’s payments for his safe keeping?’ Alexander has not been balancing papal budgets for thirty years for nothing, and these days he has no vice-chancellor that he can trust.

‘Oh, they want the man, not the money. I made sure about that. The payments stay with Your Holiness.’

‘Good. And what else?’

Burchard stares at him, faltering.

‘Come, come – it cannot be so terrible.’

‘They demand His Most Reverend Lord Cardinal of Valencia, as a further hostage on their journey to Naples.’

In the grainy light of the room, father and son look at each other.

‘I believe, I believe… that in this way His French Majesty thinks he will secure your Holy Father’s anointing of his coronation in Naples, should he take the throne.’

‘I am sure you are right.’ Now the moment is come Alexander feels remarkably calm. ‘Thank you, Burchard, I am grateful for your observations.’

‘Shall I wait for your answer? I have been deliberating myself, and I would suggest—’

‘No. No. You should get to your house and strip out whatever you can carry before they arrive. I will deal with this.’

Burchard’s long face drops even longer. Inside the disgust, excitement is running through even his veins, and he seems almost disappointed to be dismissed.

‘They treat us like serfs who haven’t paid their fealty.’ Cesare stands, arms crossed, by the window, his silhouette framed black against winter sunlight, the air alive with dust. ‘It’s outrageous.’

‘They are the demands of a king with twenty-five thousand men behind him.’ The Pope, in his chair, is relaxed, fingers entwined and still. ‘I dare say you or I, with his advantage, might do the same. Nevertheless, the fact that there are demands at all gives us power.’

‘Ha! How?’

‘How? Think about it. He is negotiating for papal approval for the throne of Naples. What he is not doing is setting out to depose me and put another man in my stead.’

‘That may be exactly what he will do as soon as he takes Sant’ Angelo.’

‘Oh, we will never give up Sant’ Angelo.’

‘And if he storms us there? Which he will…’

‘Then, before the castle falls, we will agree to everything else. In which case, he will have what he wants and there will be no reason for a further bloodbath in order to depose us. Put yourself in his shoes, Cesare. If you were leading his army what would you do?’

‘I would be on my way south as fast as I could get my artillery out the gates,’ he says with no hesitation, as if he has been matching it all, move for move. ‘That many soldiers five months on the road are hungry for a lot more than food. The King is already building scaffolds in the major piazzas to warn off looters.’

‘So why waste more time organising a council of reform? It is no small thing to depose a pope. Much more convenient to work with the one you have got.’ He smirks. ‘Poor della Rovere. All this way for nothing. I must send him a message of condolence.’

‘So, what? We give him Djem?’

Alexander blows out a noisy breath. ‘If we keep the money, there is no reason why not. The King wants to scare the Sultan into thinking they are serious in their crusade. But they’ll never get further than Naples. Djem is the one who’ll be terrified. The great Turkish warrior has been drunk for years to avoid thinking about his brother.’

Cesare cannot help but smile. They are fighting for their lives and his father is finding things to amuse him as if they are about the most ordinary of Church business. He thinks back to the man who barely a few weeks before was foaming at the mouth to get his mistress back. The change is a joy to witness. ‘And the Cardinal of Valencia,’ he says quietly.

‘Ah, yes. The Cardinal of Valencia: him they do need. Because, as we know, the Pope is most fond…’

‘And with him as hostage they force your hand to invest Charles as King of Naples when they oust Alfonso.’

‘Yes. Burchard is a clever fellow when he stops being pompous. Yes, indeed. I would do that to save my son.’

‘And they will take Naples.’

The Pope shrugs as if it is not worth answering.

‘So, it would be better if I did not go.’ Cesare says nothing for a few moments. ‘But I have to go, for them to believe that we have really capitulated.’

‘Indeed.’

The Pope looks proudly at his son. There are times when he is struck by the beauty of him, when he can see echoes of Vannozza’s face, the same generous mouth, the same broad-set dark eyes. And the same beguiling sense of self-containment, whatever the thoughts fulminating behind.

‘Everyone says winter is a terrible time to visit Naples,’ Cesare says flatly, after a while. ‘I think, if it meets with your approval, I will not go the whole way.’

Alexander smiles. ‘Ah! My hearing is getting bad these days. But I shall not ask you to repeat it. When I shake hands on the agreement it would be best to have honesty shining in my face.’

Cesare’s gaze flips up to the back wall of the room, where Santa Caterina’s disputation in the court of Alexandria is now finished; a crowded scene of magnificence and fashion, its fresh colours more vivid than life itself. Next to Caterina, pretty and fair as young Lucrezia, right down to the hint of the childlike double chin, stands a Turkish prince, dressed to kill, if only through style.

‘What about Prince Djem?’

‘Ha! Djem is a troublemaker. Let the French deal with him for a while.’

The two men look at each other. In these months of growing anxiety they have become, even in disagreement, increasingly at ease.

‘You don’t think we give too much away, Father?’ Cesare says at last.

‘No! In truth we could not give away less. Rome remains intact. The King of France will bow his knee to me, Pope Alexander VI. And Giuliano della Rovere and all those who wanted me humiliated will have to swallow their own bile.’

‘And Naples?’

‘We will deal with Naples when it happens. The French have more enemies now that they have trampled all over Italy. Spain is already chafing at the bit. If I was Charles I would loot fast and leave by ship, for I wouldn’t rate my chance of an easy retreat.’

Cesare glances back up at the fresco. At its centre the great arch of Constantine rises up, faithfully copied just as it stands now, amid the ruins in Rome, embossed with gold and reminding all who see it of the triumphs of good government. Though in this incarnation its inscription is dedicated not to an emperor but a pope. Alexander VI: ‘The Bringer of Peace.’ Such an arse-licker Pinturicchio is, Cesare thinks. They all are…

He turns to go, dipping his knee towards his father as he always does. But then, almost without thinking, he leans further down and kisses the Pontiff’s feet. Alexander lays his hand on his son’s head. Pope and cardinal. Father and son. Teacher and pupil.

‘Cesare?’ He waits till he is almost at the door. ‘There is something else you should know.’

‘What?’

‘Your mother’s house has been attacked.’

‘When? By whom?’

‘Two nights ago. By men from the Swiss Guard, it seems, though I do not yet know for sure. I am telling you because it will almost certainly become known before you leave, and when it does I want you to do nothing about it. Do you hear? Your mother is safe here and the damage will be repaired. We play a longer game than temper and instant reprisals.’

Cesare stands, his face impassive. ‘One enemy at a time, Father,’ he says quietly. ‘I understand. But when this is—’

‘I don’t need to know. I will be too busy raising an opposition to this web-footed French king. Now, I am going to pray. And I suggest you do the same.’

‘What about my mother?’

‘Prayer first. Then I will tell your mother.’